Round one to Sunak – but what he needs is a knockout blow

Merely edging ahead in a debate is not enough when you are 20 points behind in the polls

In a close-run contest, Rishi Sunak will feel he narrowly won the first of the live television debates.
The problem for him, though, is that merely edging ahead in a debate is not enough when you are 20 points behind in the polls.
The Prime Minister needs to do something extraordinary to turn around the numbers before the election, and on this evidence his strategy is to chip away at Labour’s lead rather than trying to take a sledgehammer to it at the first opportunity.
A snap YouGov poll, taken minutes after the debate had finished, had 51 per cent of people saying Mr Sunak had won, with 49 per cent saying Sir Keir won. The good news for the Tories is that there are plenty more debates to come – and if Mr Sunak keeps winning them, he can move the dial. But can he move it enough?
Sir Keir, struggling to find the right camera to look into at the start of the evening, tried to frame the election as either more of “the chaos and division of the last 14 years” or turning the page with Labour.
Mr Sunak, now something of a veteran of these debates, looked straight down the lens and said: “Uncertain times call for bold action. Apart from raising taxes and raiding your pension, no one knows what Labour would do.”
The first half of the hour-long ITV programme started badly for the Prime Minister. The audience laughed at him when he insisted NHS waiting lists were coming down, then groaned when he blamed Covid for the numbers being so high in the first place.
He also struggled to come up with a convincing answer to the question many of his colleagues have been asking – why did he call an early election if, as he says, the economy is going to get better?
Sir Keir succeeded in planting the idea in people’s heads that Mr Sunak fears the economy is going to get worse, and landed another blow by subtly reminding the audience that the Prime Minister, married to a billionaire’s daughter, cannot know what it is like to have your phone cut off, as the Starmers did when Sir Keir was a child.
But after the advertising break, Mr Sunak looked like a man who had been given a half time team-talk by Sir Alex Ferguson. Suddenly he was more aggressive, more focused and more energetic, making every question about tax.
He rammed home his claim that Labour would raise taxes on every family by £2,000 – which Sir Keir called “garbage” – while the Labour leader admitted that he would raise specific taxes.
“If you think Labour are going to win, start saving,” said Mr Sunak. “He is going to put up your taxes, put up your bills, as clear as night follows day.”
Mr Sunak was at his best when the debate turned to immigration. “If I’m your prime minister, the planes will go to Rwanda,” he said, before asking Sir Keir: “What are you going to do?”
Sir Keir said that “we need to smash the gangs” that are running the small cross-Channel boats, but Mr Sunak said the Labour leader had voted against the laws the Tories brought in to deal with them.
Warming to his theme, Mr Sunak harangued his opponent, telling him: “I’ve got a plan. You might not like it, but I do have a plan. What are you going to do?”
Julie Etchingham, the host, asked whether Mr Sunak would pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights if it blocked Rwanda flights, and he said he would “choose our country’s security over a foreign court every time”. Sir Keir said he would not. There were frowns from some in the audience.
Then came Mr Sunak’s big finale: “You’ve had 14 years with nothing else to do but think about the future,” he told Sir Keir, “and you haven’t got any ideas.”
First round, then, to Mr Sunak – but he cannot win this fight on a narrow points decision. At some point in the campaign, he will have to come up with a knockout blow.